Pagan

» bingley - A couple of bloopers

>>Indeed, the city was so well known as a centre of non-western religions that people still use the term ‘pagan’ as a sometimes objectionable term to indicate a believer of a rival form of religion.<<

If your date for the foundation of Pagan is correct, the history of the English word 'pagan' goes back before that. It derives from the Roman paganus or country-dweller and was used by the urban, mostly Christian, elite for those who still followed the traditional Roman religion. See: this Latin dictionary

>>Some famous monuments have inscriptions in four languages: Burma, Pyu, Mon and Pali (better known in western countries as Sanskrit). <<

Sanskrit and Pali are in fact different languages, just as Latin and French are different languages. Pali was a later development from Sanskrit. See this information from the University of Washington Asian Languages programme

-- posted by bingley

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